


But in Your Dreams Whatever They Be, Dream a Little Dream of Me

by imaginarycircus



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: Angst, F/M, dream fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-12
Updated: 2012-11-12
Packaged: 2017-11-18 12:18:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/561004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaginarycircus/pseuds/imaginarycircus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Lizzie's feelings about Darcy change after she reads his letter she's plagued by a series of unsettling dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But in Your Dreams Whatever They Be, Dream a Little Dream of Me

The first time she dreamed about him they were in a museum, though not one she recognized. The framed art was blurry, just smears of color on the walls. She wandered through echoing rooms trying to see something, trying to bring images into clarity by squinting at them. 

Someone tapped her on the shoulder. "You'll get a headache if you keep squinting like that." 

She glanced back. Darcy was standing behind her, wearing the red bow tie and cap she'd made everyone wear while imitating him on her vlog. 

"Look at the painting now," he said. It took her a moment to turn away from the his intense stare, intent on the painting and not on her. The painting was absolutely clear now. A Madonna and child, rendered in deep, vibrant pigments: searing blues and bloody crimsons, the skin tones so creamy she was sure you could reach out and stroke them, feel the warmth and give of flesh. 

They walked from painting to painting and each one became clear only when Darcy set his hand lightly on Lizzie's shoulder. At first there seemed no order to the paintings, which were hung side by side, very nearly overlapping each other. Renaissance works were jammed cheek by jowl with modern and impressionist paintings. There seemed to be no theme, or organizing principle until they reached a small dark room. The first painting was Klimt's _The Kiss_ , next to it was a painting of Pygmalion and Galatea embracing, and after that a Toulouse-Lautrec of two people in bed kissing rendered in heavy pastel strokes. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end like they were charged with static. She was all too aware of the weight and warmth of Darcy's hand on her shoulder. His smallest finger was pressed just beyond the collar of her shirt, against her skin. 

"That's actually two women," Darcy said in her ear, still standing just behind her. His hand dropped away. 

"Yeah, I'm sensing a theme here," Lizzie managed to say after a moment. 

He didn't respond and when she turned around, she was alone and disappointed. 

All the next day she worried at the dream like a stone she could smooth rough edges from, or a knot she could unravel if only she tried for long enough and then she forced herself to set it aside. It might be the sort of problem she'd share with Jane, if Jane were at home. It wasn't phone conversation material. It was definitely not the sort of thing she would ever share with Charlotte, who would pin it down and dissect it like a frog in a biology class. She'd make detailed color drawings of its digestive system. Lizzie really didn't want to see the digestive system of her dream, if that made a lick of sense. 

Two weeks passed and she was so busy with her internship and research that she fell into bed late every night and slept like the proverbial dead. Then came a Saturday night of no sleep. She lay in bed for two hours staring at the ceiling, huffing, tossing, turning, punching her pillow and and then finally climbed out of bed and went downstairs for some chamomile tea and an old black and white movie. She curled up in the soft old leather chair in the corner of the living room and watched something with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The dresses were so pretty--all sparkle, feathers, and floating chiffon. Why couldn't she faff around all day wearing crazy-beautiful dresses and tap dancing through problems? She could probably pull off one or two of the dresses, but she couldn't tap dance to save her life or anyone else's. 

She fell asleep nestled under a mildly scratchy green carriage blanket. This dream was cast in that luminescent black and white of 1930s films. Lizzie was standing on an endless shiny black floor and her shoes tapped and clicked as she walked. There was a big band in full swing, but neither the musicians nor the conductor could see her. She stood uncertainly in the middle of the enormous room, or the enormous plain, or whatever it was, and she waited. The songs segued from one into another. The strappy silver shoes were hurting her feet, but she knew there was nowhere to go. This endless black dance floor was all there was. 

She was considering sitting down on the floor when someone slid his arm around her waist and said, "I believe this is my dance." 

Of course it was Darcy. He swept her into his arms and it was so much better than awkwardly swaying in place at a wedding in front of a lot of people. He pulled off formal wear well, his bow tie appropriately black. She was light as meringue in his arms, but they did not fly around the floor like Astaire and Rogers would have. They managed a respectable foxtrot. Darcy did not speak, but strangely it wasn't uncomfortable as long as they kept dancing--their bodies in perfect concert. She spent most of the dance staring at the second button down on his shirt because it was just below her eye level, but she glanced up at his face every so often. Each time she did she was perplexed by the expression on his face, which was one she'd call mulling. He seemed entirely oblivious to their dance, to holding her, and that gave her a spiky, nervous feeling, so she returned her eyes to his button as they moved effortless about the floor while her shoes clicked. 

The song came to a close, but the band didn't start up another song. Lizzie glanced over and the music stands were all empty, all the musicians had evaporated. When Darcy's hands fell away from her, she knew without looking that he was gone too. She was alone again. Her next dream was about chasing Lydia through a mall that only sold underwear and orthopedic shoes. She woke up with a crick in her neck from sleeping in a chair.

Darcy began to pop up randomly in other dreams. She'd notice him standing in a corner, just observing what ever was happening in her dream as if he were some benevolent spirit whom no one else could see. She often found herself looking for him and was disappointed when he wasn't there. They were only dreams, just her unconscious mind working out bits of psychological effluvia. They didn't mean anything. 

She was able to believe that until the dream in which Darcy found her in the university library and spoke to her in a language she couldn't understand or identify. She wished the dream were subtitled and as if by magic words started to appear across Darcy's chest as he spoke, but they were written in one of the Nordic languages and she couldn't understand any better. He repeated himself over and over and she just had to shake her head apologetically at first and then more and more frantically, repeating that she couldn't understand him. Pleading with him to speak English. 

He said one final thing and turned and walked away down a long narrow hallway, the sort you'd find in any office building. The library had morphed when she wasn't paying attention. The words hung in the air where he'd been standing: "I am speaking English. You just don't understand." 

That meant something and she was too guilt ridden to ignore the message. She hadn't understood Darcy at all. She'd thought she had him pegged, but she'd been wrong about so much. Here's what she knew about Darcy: he's tall and uses sealing wax, he wears slightly old fashioned clothing, he's socially awkward, and disturbingly wealthy. His two closest friends were people Lizzie liked very much and she hadn't been able to understand how they put up with Darcy, but maybe that was because she hadn't understood Darcy. 

Often when she took a break during the day to get a cup of tea, or when she was walking across a parking lot to her car--she'd think of him and wonder if he'd gotten over her, wonder if he was still hurt, wondered if he thought about her, wondered if he'd really been in love with her. Because if he'd failed to seen her, and had misunderstood her as badly as she had him? Then he'd fallen in love with a mirage, but she had no way of knowing how well he'd understood her. He'd certainly watched her often enough, but who knew how that translated? Only Darcy did. 

Three nights running she dreamed of the day he'd given her the letter, the moment when he walked out the door. He'd paused on the threshold, his hand giving a small flutter of indecision. She'd noticed it when editing the footage. She replayed that snippet several times, thinking she might be imagining things, but no, in the end she decided he'd almost turned around--that he'd wanted to say something more. The idea thrilled her and she couldn't tamp down the effervescent sensation that bubbled up in her chest as if she were newly poured champagne.

In the first dream he turned around and came back and snatched the letter away saying, "I've changed my mind." Ironically, her feelings were hurt and a cold, concrete sadness bled into her thoughts all the following day, even though she knew it was ridiculous. She couldn't shut the emotion off--didn't know how. Everything was so much easier when Darcy was just an arrogant jerk in a bow tie and newsie cap, someone she could mock in her vlogs, but even then he'd gotten under her skin and lodged there like a nettle sting. 

During the second dream he sat with her as she read his letter. When she finished and looked up, he nodded and said, "You look pale. Would you like some carrot juice?" She shook her head and asked him to repeat himself, certain she had misheard, but she could only get him to talk about juice. She decided that sometimes dreams just didn't make any sense and you had to accept that. 

Twice the next day she thought she saw him, but they were tall, dark haired strangers in a suits. She refused to examine the happy anticipation that had sprung up her chest both times. Confusion was the least of her issues surrounding Darcy these days. She was starting to feel--things. Things she would not name, maybe could not name. 

He was standing in the doorway in the third dream, utterly still like a paused video. Then his hand fluttered, but instead of walking out, he turned around and returned to his chair. 

"This isn't how it actually happened," she told him. 

"I know, but it should have." He reached out and gently cupped her cheek and just when she thought he moved the tiniest bit toward her--she woke up with Lydia standing over her ranting about the the car keys, which were missing. Lizzie didn't know whether to thank Lydia or thump her with her pillow.

Focus was not normally a problem for Lizzie, who could spend hours researching and writing. More and more often she found herself staring at nothing. Minutes would pass and she'd have no idea who or where she was, what she'd been thinking--she had blank periods. Perhaps she was being haunted, her guilty conscience hammering at her until she set things to rights. She could contact him and apologize for the things she'd said, but she wasn't exactly sure what the extent of her error was and she worried that contacting him would make things harder for him. The kind thing to do was to leave him alone, to let him forget her, and to suffer what she'd brought upon herself by herself. 

She didn't realize her strange, introspective mood was spilling over into her vlogs until Charlotte called her and asked if she was all right. 

"Sure. I'm fine." 

"Lizzie. You can lie to yourself all you like, but you can't lie to me. I know you." Charlotte grew quickly frustrated with Lizzie's reticence, but Lizzie knew the dreams were not something she could discuss with Charlotte. Charlotte would make her face truths that were too sharp. She needed to approach them slowly and carefully so as not to get sliced to ribbons. She longed for Jane who would listen and soothe her, wouldn't push. Jane was still raw from Bing's abandonment and Lizzie did not want to add anything to that, so she kept her conflicted thoughts and unexamined feelings tucked away. 

She took long walks to wear herself out so she'd be too tired to dream, but the exercise simply made it harder for her to fall asleep. 

The most ridiculous and intense dream came on a Thursday night. She'd been up writing a paper on new media and social justice until nearly two and was so exhausted that she'd shucked off her clothes and crawled into bed in her underwear and passed out. She blinked. She was sitting in the lecture hall that her freshman anthropology course had been taught in. She was alone in only her underwear, an unmatched set of blue cotton underpants and a plain white bra. She really hoped the dream wasn't going anywhere and she'd simply sit there and that nothing would happen, but she knew it wouldn't. 

"I think you're overdressed for the occasion," he said from behind her. 

"Why are you always behind me in these dreams?" 

"Because you won't let me stand anywhere else." 

She twisted around in her seat and looked at him, but before she could ask him what that meant he leaned down and murmured, "Close your eyes, Lizzie." She let them flutter shut and her bottom lip quivered. She was certain he was going to kiss her. He did, but he kissed her right eyelid and then her left and he melted away. She opened her eyes and found herself lying in her bed, morning sunlight streaming in slats across the quilt. 

For a day and a half she considered ways to contact him--she could send him a video (not one she'd post on the internet), she could write him an email, send him a hand written letter, send a singing telegram, or a note by carrier pigeon. But she didn't quite know what to say. _I'm sorry. I was wrong. I didn't see you. Can you forgive me? Can I see you? Do you hate me? I wish we could start over. I'm still angry and confused about what you did to Jane, but maybe I don't understand. Can you explain? Could we be friends? Could I like you? Could I be good for you? Would you be good for me? Who are you? Why do I want to know so badly that I cannot sleep without dreaming of you? ___

In the end she decided to revert to her original plan and let him be. That was probably the wise choice, but she wasn't happy about it. Even her mother noticed something was wrong and lectured her about proper nutrition when Lizzie pushed her dinner around her plate again.

"Men do not like girls who are skin and bones. Now eat up before you fade away." 

Lizzie glanced at her father, but he just shrugged and ate the last of his peas. She turned to Lydia who nodded, and with her mouth full of mashed potatoes, said, "She's right. Men like T and A." 

She did her best to forget, but he lurked in the corners of her thoughts both awake and asleep. She told herself it was all for the best. Even if he came back, even if she wanted him to, he was still Darcy and that was problematic. He'd still done things she wasn't sure she could forgive and she really didn't know him at all. But she wanted to. She told herself sternly that she'd missed her chance to pry him open, coax him into the light. It was done. There wasn't any hope, or any reason to hope, but she couldn't help but hope a little anyway no matter what logic told her was sensible and probable. People were not always sensible and logical; God knows her mother was proof that some people could go through life never being either of those things. Darcy erred on the other end of the spectrum, but she knew he was human and therefore unpredictable. Strangely, it never once occurred to her that he might be enduring similar growing pains, that her words might be effecting change in him, but then that was probably all for the best.


End file.
